0A6 Cynthia
0A6 - Dublin, Oh 2020 ''Cynthia. ''She is a little girl, blond haired and normally as cute as a button. Now tears stream down her face. She bites down on sobs. It's dark and the rocks are cold, but the darkness is her friend. She is running away. The bad men want to hurt her. Four factions There are four factions. Agents Some sort of Spy/National Security thingie. The Agents want possession of Cynthia and will do whatever necessary to quietly recover her. Men and women, they are fast, strong and accurate. Their guns hit like freight-trains having 'roid rage. *''Meta - these people have reflex boosts and targeting upgrades. They don't have to fist it up with a cyber psycho. They have to draw and get a solid head/brain-case shot before the Cybered up idiot realizes he's crossed the wrong people.'' *Intent towards Cynthia: Recover her as intact and in as good a condition as possible. These people are hard and cold. They scare the hell out of Cynthia. But this fear is relatively misplaced. Mercenaries *The Aforementioned "Cybered Up Idiots". A Cyberpunk adventuring team. The Samurai is profoundly cybered-up and could probably punch it up with a truck. They've been hired by a Mr. Johnson, to extract Cynthia. The job has gone seriously sideways. Too much armed security responded too quickly. Their escape was cut off, and the State Trooper patrol vehicle that came out of nowhere. *''Meta - violent and non-linear these guys are profoundly dangerous.'' *Intent towards Cynthia: A Mix. The Knee jerk is "Awwww." about a little girl held captive by an evil mega-corp. This was probably done to keep someone important in line. It has happened before. The evil mega-corp in this case was Battelle Memorial Institute. However, paranoid and professional are synonyms here. They are somewhat scary to Cynthia. Ohio State Patrol *''Ohio State Patrol Armed Response Unit, Columbus #2'' - they were on hot watch when word arrived of a running gun battle moving north from Battelle in Columbus and, nightmares personified, into the Olentangy Indian Caverns. *''Meta - an Armored SWAT Team. Drop your weapons and kiss the ground, and you'll live to see the next sunrise. They are cybered up, themselves. Veterans of various wars and insanity, they know for a fact how dangerous Cyberpunk Adventuring teams can be. They are armed with super-heavy tasers, EMP guns and tangler grenades as well as heavy caliber rifles with armor piercing rounds. They are angry and somewhat concerned.'' *Intent Toward Cynthia - they don't even know about her. If they encounter her, they may consider her a lost tourist and pass her back outside where patrolmen are cordoning off the site. Crazies *Henry Mackenzie Douglas. He used to be a Human Genome Specialist at the Ohio State University Genetics Therapy lab. He was working on culturing organs for people who lost theirs. He discovered that his work had been perverted, and his genome as well. He is angry, obsessed and crazy. Douglas has with him a handful of people from the "Earth Liberation Front" - the people from whom he found support. *The ELFs are crazy in their own ways. Violent extremist greens for peace and nature. A couple of these people are military vets. They have all engaged in hit-and-run raids before. They are also possessed of some seriously weird non-sense in their heads. When conducting a terror raid - they use designer drugs to crank their reflexes and metabolism up. This is like horror stories of PCP. The side effects are pretty nasty, and coming down off of them is like having a schizophrenic breakdown in hell. *Intent towards Cynthia: Unknown. Sometimes Douglas wants to kill her with fire. Other times, he seems to think that if he can make physical contact with her... then something will happen - maybe a "Spiritual Melding" or something. Other times he just stares at a grainy print out of a surveillance camera image and rocks back and forth. *''They'll probably be much more direct and pragmatic towards anyone else in the way.'' What Happened Douglas learned of Cynthia and flipped out. He hocked himself to the hilt and got in touch with the ELF. He helped them with their performance enhancing drug project. As Douglas was setting up to stage his raid, he made himself visible to BMI security Meanwhile A "Mr. Johnson" hired the Mercenaries to go in and liberate Cynthia. The ELFie and Merc Raids overlapped. BMI Security was distracted numerous times by distractions planned by both infiltration teams. The Mercs escaped with Cynthia, fleeing just ahead of Douglas and his ELFies and BMI security. Their escape plan was compromised. In an exciting action scene, they drive north out of the city, engaging in sporadic gun fire and deeply reckless driving. At the corner of Sawmill PKWY and Home rd, the Mercs hit an Ohio State Patrol cruiser that was trying to cut them off. They shot the state troopers in a brief but intense gun battle and fled on foot. They encountered the Olentangy Indian Caverns and fled inside. Cynthia, petrified and panicking, broke away, and fled deeper into the caverns. The Wynadotte Indians and Dublin PD are focused on getting all civilians out of the cave. Ohio State Patrol, Columbus PD, a handful of FBI agents and some tight lipped people in black are trying to seal a perimeter The problem is that the Olentangy Indian Caverns have never been fully explored. No one knows how far they really go. The Punchline Arisaka is a Japanese Megacorp that basically does whatever it wants. The American Firm Militech is just about as brazen. With connections all over the Military-Industrial Complex, Dozens of high ranking Congressmen and Administration officials in their pockets and mountains of cash, they act with impunity, above the law. The Goldilocks Project was designed to put a stop to this. The first step was to create a computer penetration software suite better than anything the world has seen heretofore. The second step was to design a machine that could run such a suite faster and harder than anything before. The third step was to be able to get the cybernetic bunker busting technology into position and deploy it. With advances in bio-technology, wetware and bio-computing - the suite and dedicated processing to run it could be built into a person. Cynthia is that stealthy delivery platform. She is a bioroid, an artificial human. She has the right reflexes plugged into her. She can almost telepathically communicate with computers and electronic systems. She loves to climb and play "hide and go seek". She's scary good at it. She is designed to infiltrate Arasaka or Militech and insert her payload. Once this is complete, project Goldilocks will own all their corporate data. Project Goldilocks in a black NSA project. If successful, the United States Federal Government will own Arisaka or Militech, or both. Cynthia was in part based on Douglas' work and in part on his DNA (His DNA was already closely tied in with the artificial organ work) Douglas has every right to be weirded out about Cynthia, but if he was thinking more clearly, he'd have sued for custody. Thinking clearly is no longer Douglas' strong suit. Fear, adrenaline and hard core "juice" have turned him into a violent, mumbling looney, Because of Cynthia's nature, she can actually telepathically hear the Fringepath System. But her nature is to try and penetrate, dominate and control any major computer system she comes into contact with. The Fringepath System outguns her the way the sun outshines her. She can talk to the Fringepath rings and get empathic impressions of how each ring is doing. She'd need keys of the right access level to open up a ring to being repaired, altered, and moved or whatever, but for Cynthia, such operations would be easy. If she could resist trying to hack the system. If she tries to hack the Fringepath system, it will just shut her out, cold. Cynthia would be as unfringeworthy as any living creature could ever be, permanently. A bad roll on this could render Cynthia catatonic, locked out of access to her own body and mind. Worse, Cynthia is a prototype. An engineering test model. She will never be used for the function she's built for. Her little sisters would be advances on her basic design. Cynthia appears to be a six year old little girl. She is, in fact, two. But she is very intelligent. Her learning and socialization are equivalent to that of a six year old, perhaps a touch more. Physically Cynthia is nearly identical to a human child. When it is play time, her flexibility and stamina surpass Olympic level Atheletes. She has a bump to her climb, hide and move silently scores. When play time is over, she could sleep on a rope. As she grows up, Cynthia will seem a normal young woman, with higher than average Dex, Con and Int Scores. If she grows up. As the PCs exit the ring they hear... The PCs will exit the ring to the sounds furtive movement - ELFies are right below the holographic blind that covers the Ring chamber. To their left, the Mercs press forward, Looking for Cynthia and a back door. To their right, Agents watch to neutralize and capture unknown subjects, and retrieve the "Package" Towards the Front of the Cavern Complex, Columbus PD C-SWAT is setting up to come in. "Flash bang them all and let the desk sergeant sort them out." Further back in the Cave, Cynthia is sliding further into unknown territory. Hilarity to ensue in 3...2...1... Category:Node 0 Category:0A6 Category:Encounters Category:NPCs